The present disclosure relates to integrated circuit designs and, more particularly, to systems and methods for providing a supply voltage to a localized portion of an integrated circuit.
There are two major issues limiting the optimal use of voltage scaling. In order to minimize the power dissipation, ideally each circuit would be operating at its minimum voltage. Unfortunately, the complexities of multi-voltage power supplies and the routability issues of having a large number of power distribution grids limit this possibility. Another issue is wake-up time. When an idling circuit with a reduced voltage is suddenly required to perform an operation, the speed at which that circuit can perform will be limited by the rate at which that circuit's power rail can be raised to a higher voltage. Particularly in speed-critical systems, this additional delay can limit the utility of voltage scaling.